May 17, 2012 – Machiine

I watched this Ted video tonight and I got excited because it touches on some of the ideas I have about creativity and analytical thinking. I actually wrote an article a few days ago on something similar. My thoughts were that perception of ourselves and of others locks people in as either analytical or creative. This happens with our view of intelligence as well. I believe however, that most often our potential is greater than our perceived reality. Well Kelley argues something similar. If you are interested you can read what I wrote here on When Left Meets Right.

Watch the video, it’s slow at first, but you get into it.

“David Kelley’s company IDEO helped create many icons of the digital generation — but what matters even more to him is unlocking the creative potential of people and organizations to innovate routinely. Is your school or workplace divided into “creatives” versus practical people? Yet surely, David Kelley suggests, creativity is not the domain of only a chosen few. Telling stories from his legendary design career and his own life, he offers ways to build the confidence to create.” – Video description from Ted

Here’s the link to the original video on Ted Talks.

The following is an exerpt on a talk I gave about using blogging to increase your Organic SEO.

Quoted from: http://www.designworklife.com/2011/10/19/karshhagan-social-animals/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20designworklife/dwl%20(design%20work%20life)

SEO which means Search Engine Optimization, is critical to rank well on Search Engines like Google. You probably already knew that, but do you know how search engines actually index content? It may surprise you. Search engines want to give their users the very best information possible, so they use a formula to determine the most relevant content to display on the top search results. They look at keywords, links, site authority, social media links, domain authority, and the load time of your site. You may be wondering, “Where should I focus my time?”. If you are new to search engine optimization, and are looking for a strategy, focus on blogging. Fortunately writing articles on blogs targets nearly all of the major SEO variables at once.

1. Keywords

Search engines love keywords. But not just random keywords, they like phrases and sentences too. When writing a blog post some words will be used over and over again. For example, if you write a blog about a vacation destination, it is likely that the word “vacation” will be used multiple times. These words are known as keywords. Search engines calculate the number of times keywords are used within content as part of their page ranking algorithm. They also look at the surrounding content and sentences used near the keywords to ensure that the words are used naturally. (Important note here. Don’t stuff your article with way too many keywords. Spammy sites do this and search engines are aware of this technique and punish sites for it.)

2. Relevance

Search engines want to provide the most relevant information to their users. In many cases, such as news feeds or topical information, they use the date the blog post was written to calculate its relevance. Often a day or two after posting a blog post you will see it ranking at the top of the search results, and then its rank will start to fall again. Blog posts help get websites on the top results when people are looking for the latest articles.

3. Authority

Site and Page Authority are calculated in a couple of ways. Firstly search engines look at how old a domain is. If it is newly registered then it won’t have the same age authority as an older domain. They also look at how many inbound links are pointing to the website. Blogging is a great way to increase inbound links. By providing valuable information, people will often link to your blog posts from their own websites or from Facebook and Twitter. It is generally agreed among SEO experts that direct links from other websites are ranked higher than links from social media sites.

4. Meta tags are dying

This is something that may surprise many people. It used to be that search engines relied heavily on meta tags in the top of your website’s html to index page results. Search engines still use them today, but not in the same way. Search engines rely on content within your site to index page results and then use meta tags to confirm the site’s purpose. Blog posts without any meta tags can still rank at the top of search results. While including meta tags is considered good practice, they have become secondary to site content.

5. More landing pages

Every time you write a post, a new page is created on your site. If you think of your website as a fishing net, every time you write a new post, the net gets bigger. Search engines index each blog as a unique page. Blogging also helps keep people on your site longer. By including links within your blog posts to similar older posts on your website, people are likely to click on the links and stay on your website longer. Search engines also use those internal links in calculating the articles relevance.

The Outcome

If good SEO is important to you, then writing blog posts is the best way to improve it. If you write just one new blog article a week, at the end of the year your website will have 52 new keyword rich, authority building, SEO haven web pages.